


RED

by 78bathsheba



Category: Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/78bathsheba/pseuds/78bathsheba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on Little Red Riding Hood. Except Red is a deadly archer, and the wolf is not what it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	RED

**Author's Note:**

> Written for THGchallenges . tumblr . com's Fairy Tale Fic Challenge
> 
> =====
> 
> I don't own these characters; if anything, they own me.

She walked steadily and purposefully through the pre-dawn woods on her way to the cabin. Mother Sae had caught the fever, and Katniss had been tasked with bringing the old family friend provisions and a few packets of Primrose's horrendous tasting--but highly effective--tisanes. She adjusted the red hood, trying to protect as much of her dusky face as possible from the cold, and settled the basket on her arm. 

It was a short enough trip to the cabin, though one that most feared to make. No law stopped the denizens of the Twelfth Village from entering the woods, but there didn’t need to be. Everyone from the wizened crone at the Hob to the babe just turning from his mother's breast knew the stories of what happened in that still, dark place: the cruelty of the sorcerer Snow and his bizarre chimerae (mutts, the children whispered to frighten each other), and of course, the Gray Queen, her Majesty of the Coin, she of the iron hand and army of Peacekeepers, ever roaming the borders and outlying lands of the Capitol and each of the thirteen Villages that comprised the Kingdom of Panem.

Katniss wasn't stupid. She surreptitiously shifted the bow and quiver that hung at her back, next to her thick black braid, under the cloak. It was dangerous to be caught in the Queen's woods with weapons clearly meant for poaching, but she figured that the protection her bow offered far outweighed the risk of punishment. Besides, she wasn’t hunting today, and anyway these were her woods: a fearful place to many, but a place of comfort and solitude to her. Someplace far from the cheerful bustle of the Village, where she could sort her thoughts and mourn her losses without being subjected to the pity she so scorned. Sometime between being a terrified child of eleven hunting to feed her family after her father’s death, and the strong-willed woman of eighteen--who caught and traded her own game--that she had become, she had grown to love the woods. It provided for and comforted her, at times more of a parent than her own distant mother. Up in a tree, skirts tucked scandalously between her legs and bow in hand, Katniss felt more at home than she did anywhere else. 

Well, almost anywhere.

She’d felt safe, and warm, and loved in her father’s arms as a child. She’d felt that way again--along with a confusing swirl of other emotions she wasn’t prepared to name--with one other person. But they were both gone now, and Katniss refused to succumb to grief like her mother did. So she pushed it down, and ignored it, and covered it with an economy of words and an impressive scowl.

The day was just starting to lighten, going from heavy darkness to the thin gray light that heralded the coming sunrise, when she approached Mother Sae’s cabin--and knew immediately that something was wrong. Katniss quickened her pace; the door was ajar, and even from the rambling garden she could see that the usually tidy kitchen was disheveled. Face grim but hands steady, Katniss flipped her cloak over one shoulder and slowly slid the bow from her back and an arrow from the quiver. Silent as a shadow, she crept through the gap in the door.

"Child...help me...!" 

Katniss ran. No, I can’t lose someone else. No no no no no--

Mother Sae was on the floor, lying on the wool rug beside her bed, cap askew atop her silver curls. She wasn’t moving. Katniss’ heart dropped to her belly like a stone. She rushed to Sae, tenderly placing the ancient woman’s head on her lap. Sae had been like a grandmother to her, replacing the grandparents she never knew--dead on her father’s side, and might as well be on her mother’s, the way they disowned their beautiful only daughter for marrying a poor miner. They never even attended her father’s funeral, never sought out their grandchildren (not even golden Primrose!), never sent food or firewood or tonics or any assistance of any sort when their mother became enveloped by her grief and the two little girls nearly starved to death. Mother Sae had taken her father, then a wild young man of fifteen, under her care when his own parents died in the mines and of the fever in quick succession, and had done all she could for Katniss and Prim with the little she had the terrible, barren winter after their father died. There was little that she could do, though; it was a particularly harsh winter that year, as if the very earth were mourning Bas Everdeen’s death, and many houses--both merchant and Seam--lost kin to hunger and illness. By the time spring finally came, the far side of the meadow was dotted with hastily assembled cairns, the ground too cold and unyielding to even afford their dead the honor of a proper burial.

That was the year Peeta saved her life. Katniss shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts and stay in the present, stay with Sae, who she thought to be dying in her arms. This was no time to lose herself in that particular sorrow.

“Katniss....” she croaked.

“Yes, good mother, I am here.” Katniss murmurred. “Be at rest.”

“Oh child, I’m not quite ready to die yet,” Sae said with cough, struggling to sit up. “I’m still quite in one piece, for now. Just a nasty knock to the head from falling out of bed, though my vision is swimming so.” 

Katniss helped the older woman back into her bed, supporting her frail body and tenderly tucking the covers around her. From her mother and sister, Katniss knew enough about the healing arts to know that Sae likely had a mild concussion and would be perfectly fine, if a bit confused. As she bent over her old friend to kiss her cheek, Sae’s eyes suddenly fluttered open.

“The wolf! You must find it...it is not...do not....”

Katniss froze. A wolf? In these woods? It would scare off the prey animals she hunted and terrorize the village. If this were true, the beast could not be allowed to remain.

“Mother Sae, are you certain you saw a wolf?” she asked carefully.

“Yes child!” Sae breathed, but already she was slipping away.. “Claws...at the door...but do not...hurt...” Her warning ended in a light snore.

Katniss lay a cool, slim hand on Mother Sae’s wrinkled cheek and whispered a blessing before reaching for her bow and hitching her quiver onto her back.

She had a wolf to kill.

=====

It wasn’t difficult to find. There were claw marks at the door, and in various places in and around the house. Katniss wondered if the beast had somehow made it’s way inside the cottage, and stubborn Sae, rather than running, thought to stay and defend herself. The thought made her smile a bit. Outside, the wolf had trampled a path through the garden and back into the woods. It didn’t appear to be too concerned with staying hidden, but based on the size of the tracks she found, she didn’t think that this animal’s main weapon was stealth. A predator that large didn’t need to worry about slinking around; it would simply come and take what it wanted.

Still, she was completely unprepared for the beast to come running out of the woods and straight at her, slavering and growling.

Katniss quickly swung herself up into a small tree, but the wolf--large as a horse, unnaturally large--was already nipping at her heels. The young tree creaked ominously as the beast assaulted it, now jumping at it, now pushing at it, now tearing at the bark and softer pith as it tried to reach her. It wasn’t going to last much longer, and there was simply too much movement to allow her a decent shot. With a sharp cracking sound, the tree finally broke, and Katniss scrambled as her hiding place came crashing to the ground. Immediately, she was off and running, following a dimly formulated plan.

For the first time in her life Katniss found herself cursing Sae’s decision to live in the peace of the woods. “I’m far too old and not nearly deaf enough to live in the Village and be forced to spend the rest of my days listening to Goodwife Cartwright gossiping or the cloth sellers at the Hob bickering or the fishmongers shouting their wares,” Mother Sae had announced when she had told Katniss and her parents about her decision to build the cabin. Felicity Everdeen had murmurred her concerns, but Bas had only laughed heartily and promised Sae that he and Katniss would visit her regularly (which they did), and even bring little Primrose once she was old enough. 

There was one good thing about the remote cabin: it stood not far from a chasm that ran in a long scar across the woods. It was narrow--barely the length of an arrow’s flight--but dark and deep. It was this very narrowness that made it dangerous; not easily seen from a distance, it was only recently mapped. Very rarely did anyone fall in, now that it’s location was well-known, but those who did were never found again. Assuming the wolf wasn’t native to her woods--and she felt quite certain the monstrous beast was not--it would be unfamiliar with the fissure, and Katniss would have the element of surprise.

She was sprinting, as fast as she could, and soon she was out of the trees, and quickly running out of land as the abyss loomed in the near distance. This was it. There was nothing left for her to do but the foolish and unthinkable. Daring a glance behind her at the rapidly approaching wolf and making a few quick calculations, Katniss abruptly skidded to a stop a few yards from the chasm, smoothly sliding into a crouch, then whipping her leg about to halt her momentum.

She heard the wolf give a yelp of surprise as it barrelled past the trees, leaping at Katniss, and toward the chasm it had seen too late, whining as it scrabbled for purchased on the snow and loose stones. Blood thundering in her ears, she whirled to her feet, nocking an arrow as she turned. No such luck. The beast had not, as she’d hoped, fallen over the edge. However, it was now trapped between the precipice and her bow, pacing back and forth and growling as it eyed her in fury. Katniss had the distinct advantage. Just in time, the sun rose, illuminating the girl, the forest, and the beast, and she felt the sure stillness that always preceded an arrow flying from her bow on it’s way to a sure shot, and she knew she had bested the wolf. It would be a clean kill. 

There was was a quickening in the air then, shattering the stillness, as if the world had been holding it's breath too long and could no longer contain it. A sudden gust of wind surrounded her and the wolf, millions of glittering flakes erupting around them and momentarily blocking Katniss' view as the wolf’s high keening filled the frozen air. She cursed under her breath, narrowing her eyes and trying to adjust her aim as the maelstrom of snow slowly floated to the ground. There. She had it. She raised her bow and aimed it at the dark form-- 

"Katniss...?" he whispered, hoarse and wild. 

She froze. It can't be. It cannot be. 

He repeated himself, as if she were the apparition, and not he. "Katniss?" 

He stood in the morning sun, where the wolf should have been: pale, shivering, and naked as a newborn babe. Her bow--her precious bow--fell to the snowy ground with a dull thud, forgotten as her hands flew to her mouth in disbelief. His name was past her lips before she could even think.

"Peeta!"

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr:
> 
> 78bathsheba . tumblr . com


End file.
